Physician Supply Management: Streamline Your Medical Supply Chain

A streamlined supply chain management system cuts down on errors, improves your bottom line and saves time for your team. Automation technology is an investment in your practice. Given the massive, consistent effort it takes to keep your medical supplies in stock, organized, and accounted for, optimized supply management can streamline your physician supply management process significantly.

Consider these benefits that come with a healthcare supply chain management system:

Simplified Overview

What system are you using to keep track of your supplies? Usually, it’s an archaic, pen-and-paper list or a manual spreadsheet. Maybe there are empty boxes sitting in your supply closet, or items sitting in mislabeled containers. Tracking those items by hand can be confusing and prone to errors.

Whether you’re in a hospital or a physician’s office, you know you need supplies to operate successfully. It’s important that you have an accurate view of what’s in stock and what’s running low. If something is expired or recalled, it’s especially imperative that you have can locate those items and swap them out quickly. A streamlined system tells you exactly what you have on hand and what you need to order.

Better Patient Care

Streamlining your medical supply chain management benefits patients, too. If you can access your inventory in real time, you can ensure that supplies are available when your medical staff needs them. This frees up time for your staff to spend more with patients. Instead of spending time shuffling through supplies and spreadsheets, staff members can focus on patient care and other projects.

Cut Down on Waste

Manual supply management leaves plenty of room for error. Mistakes in ordering can lead to an excess of some supplies or a shortage of others, leftover expired products and lost orders.

Manual data entry can waste more than just supplies. Medical supply management can be a full-time job for office and hospital personnel. There can be frequent overlap of employees counting, re-counting and ordering supplies, which is a poor use of your team’s skills – especially when there is a better solution.

Streamlined Reconciling

Between placing orders and paying for the supplies, there are many steps that need to be completed correctly, and on time. There are usually different people and departments handling each of these duties. Supply chain technology brings all the parties together in one system, and streamlines each of these steps – from assessment and data gathering, to tracking orders and paying the invoice.

The data for these purchases is also easily accessible via a supply chain management program. You can access financial data, tracking and reports that would otherwise be unavailable or complicated to use, and use that information to find ways to cut costs.

Accessible Collaboration

One of the most exciting aspects of an automated medical supply chain technology is that it gets everyone on the same page. If you’ve been dealing with manual inventory tracking, you are aware of how challenging that can be. There are physician preferences to consider, different categories to manage and product research to conduct. With one system, your team has access to one hub of data, notes and product information.